


to fight the horde and sing and cry

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Valkyrie, F/M, Spoilers for ragnarok, duh. - Freeform, lightning play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:17:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: Valkyrie drinks, banters, and fucks. In that order.Or, the warrior after the war.





	to fight the horde and sing and cry

Asgard lives.

Valkyrie folds her arms and surveys the vast expanse of space beyond the bridge. The darkness stretches on beyond the immortal eye, the dizzy pinprick of stars scattered across the black like so many careless pearls. It is a stark reality, the cold loneliness of the emptiness between realms. No Bifrost. No path. Just fate, and where it sees fit to drop the wanderers and wastrels.

She takes a swig of the swill in her flask, stolen from the Grandmaster’s ship and tucked through battle in the leather of her boot. The liquor does not make her drunk, more’s the pity. Perhaps she has too many sobering thoughts to succumb to the drink.

Asgard lives, and Odin does not.

Or, perhaps, there is too much to consider of her future and her past. Valkyrie has always been one of a legion, and of late, one alone. What does it mean to be part of something new, to be part of a people who are not warriors but refugees, to follow a king who is god but not conqueror? What does it mean to fight not for duty or sisterhood, but choice?

_Freedom._

That terrible, exhilarating, impossible word. Centuries it’s been since last she has heard it. Perhaps even longer. She takes a breath. One more.

Thinks again, _freedom._

“You know, you haven’t called me by my name since we’ve met.”

She’s nothing so inelegant as startled out of her thoughts, but Valkyrie does blink at the sound of a voice behind her. Then she smirks, a quirk of her mouth into the lip of her flask.

“No?” she drawls, turning around. “I’m fairly sure I did. Let’s see...” she pretends to think. “ _Lord_ of thunder.”

Thor winces. “God of Thunder,” he mutters, folding his arms.

“Your majesty,” she offers, tipping the flask in a toast.

“Your highness,” he corrects, but there is a teasing glint in his eye.

“Thor,” she says, and though her tone is as sly as ever, there is softness there, too.

“Valkyrie,” Thor says. Low. Almost tender.

It should not shock Valkyrie so, to be Valkyrie both in title and name. Only, it has been many years since she last answered to anything but Scrapper 142. And before that, she was but _a_ Valkyrie, a sword among the Valkyrior. Now she is the last Valkyrie left, and when this new king calls to her, she can hear the old ghosts ride on his voice.

Another long swallow from her flask. “Right,” she says, turning back to the window. Turning back to the limitless void ahead. “That’s what I am.”

They are not alone on the bridge, but they’re isolated enough for Thor to take a halting step forward. His hand is warm and callused when it grips her shoulder, a show of silent support.

“Don’t get familiar,” she chides, but there is not heat in her voice this time. Familiarity is bred in blood and battle; Thor has earned her trust, and anyway, she has always loved best the fair of hair and the blue of eye.

 _Shield-maidens, falling. One in particular, limned in golden light. Pale face frozen in shock and sorrow. Her blood-tipped fingers reaching out. Seafoam gaze stricken with pain. Hela’s sword a wicked split through the ribs. Death, on pink lips known so well. Death, of a woman well worth being loved—_  

Valkyrie takes a reflexive sip, the liquor burning down her throat, setting the thought aflame.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Thor says gravely.

It is such a mortal sentiment that Valkyrie almost laughs. Instead, she finds that her stomach aches. The pall of grief, mixed with the acidic swirl of regret. And Sakaarian whiskey. 

“As I’m sorry for yours,” she says, when the tightness in her voice has eased, and the stupid prickling at the corner of her eyes has receded. She is not usually given to tears, but life has been so very long, and just this moment, she is so tired.

Thor’s hand is gentle as it exerts the smallest amount of pressure to turn her around. Valkyrie does so reluctantly, for this king is as charming as he is fierce, and there is a thrill under her skin that crackles at his touch, like the very lightning he commands from the sky.

Something in her warns, _do not get too close_ even as something else within crows, _live a little!_

“I don’t remember agreeing to a dance,” Valkyrie says archly, pushing her flask at Thor’s chest.

Thor laughs, and snags the flask gladly, ignoring Valkyrie’s dark look. He takes a long pull, throat working. Valkyrie’s mouth doesn’t go dry, precisely, but it’s a near thing.

“I wasn’t asking for one,” he says, wiping his mouth. He clasps his hand to her elbow, tilts his forehead down, down, down till it meets her own. The embrace of one warrior to another. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. His breath is sharp with alcohol, warm across Valkyrie’s face. If she closed her eyes, she could see Asgard in spring eternal, the sun beating down on gold monuments and shimmering pools. If she closed her eyes, she could be once more bearing einherjar to Valhalla.

She does not close her eyes.

“Don’t thank me,” she says instead. “I was bored. And angry. And drunk.”

_And guilty. And lost. And I didn’t do this for you, I did it for myself. For the home I left, and the ones I loved who perished, and because I was weary of running in place. Because my sword hungered for blood. Because I hungered for more._

These are words she does not say, but Thor seems to hear them. He dares to raise a hand to her face, curving fingers under her jaw.

“You were magnificent,” he says. “I’m glad for the thing with the electricity, really. What’s getting shocked within an inch of my life if it means getting to see you bear down your sword—and some very large guns—on your enemies?”

Valkyrie brings her own hand up now, tracing the edges of the patch Thor wears over his missing eye.

“If you still had your tag, I’d shock you again,” she says sweetly.

Thor breathes a laugh. “You shock me always,” he mutters, and then Valkyrie’s fingers are tripping down the side of his face, skipping over his mouth, petting the luxurious growth of his beard.

His eye darkens, clouds rolling upon the ocean. There is a fetching blush rising under his skin as well, pink like the setting sun. 

He _is_ spectacularly well-formed, and it _has_ been an age since she has shared bedsport with anyone with anywhere near the endurance as her own. 

Perhaps—

She rises on her toes just as Thor sways down, and their lips meet in a hungry kiss. A god and a Valkyrie, her fingers in his hair and his hands now at her waist, there in front of all that remains of Asgard to see.

He tastes like ozone, and the heavy humidity before a storm. She bites at his lip, and now there’s the metallic tang of blood, the clash of his teeth. The heat of his tongue.

Thor, King of Asgard and God of Thunder, is as competent a kisser as he is a commander of armies.  

The thought brings a pleased hum from Valkyrie’s chest, that skill could meet skill in their chambers as it does on the battlefield. They are well-matched in this, just as they were on the bridge to the Bifrost, just as they were on the ships chasing them from Sakaar. Equals, though he is a ruler and she not quite a subject.

Knowledge is a potent thing, and it makes Valkyrie grin when they part, the satisfied, knowing smile of a lover. Thor, on the other hand, has the look of a gobsmacked youth, his mouth fallen open and his expression nothing short of stunned.

“Well,” he says, and coughs. “Well, uh, you’re welcome. I mean! Thank you? Thank, you. You are thanked, for that. My lady. My...Valkyrie. Val—”

Valkyrie rolls her eyes. “Shut up,” she suggests, not unkindly, and steals back the flask from Thor’s lax grip. She takes the last swallow from the flask, holding Thor’s gaze as her throat works. His eye darkens again, the blush deepening, and there is something more evocative of _intent_ in the way he steps forward before Valkyrie steps back.

“Not on the bridge, majesty mine,” she says. “But find me, later. When you want to spar. I’m no Hulk, but I’d gladly meet you in the arena.”

Thor blinks. “No,” he says slowly, passing a hand over his mouth, then stroking the beard at his chin in a bemused fashion. “You are no Hulk, indeed.”

Valkyrie laughs as she walks away, far from the daunting uncertainty of space spreading out in front of her, far from the tantalizing temptation of the young king at ship’s helm.

Valkyrie laughs, and her heart is light.

 

|

 

The trickster is pacing the length of an empty loading dock, when Valkyrie arrives. 

He is staring up at Hulk ( _Banner,_ Valkyrie’s mind supplies, one more of their ragtag band that is one thing yet also another) and there is a decided...reluctance about him.

Valkyrie simply swaggers in past Loki, taking an easy leap and settling in the cradle of Hulk’s hands.

“Hello,” she says, peering up at Hulk’s expressive face. “Getting to know the god of mischief, I see.”

Loki coughs. “Yes,” he says, voice deadpan. “We’re getting along famously.”

Hulk gives an imperious growl, and Loki takes a halting step back. Valkyrie cackles.

“Hulk hate puny god,” Hulk sniffs. “At least friend god is funny. Big muscles and bad jokes. Puny god is...is…” His fingers begin to clench and Valkyrie scrambles up the slope of his arm, easy as scaling a tree. She perches on his shoulder, and scritches at his hair.

“Frustrating,” she supplies. “Annoying. Overrated. Megalomaniacal. Oh! _Opportunistic—_ ”

“Alright, thanks, that’s quite enough,” Loki interrupts, looking indignant.  “Look, er, Hulk. We got off on the wrong foot, I’m sure, but I have a healthy respect for your abilities now, and a patent desire to do—better.” He grimaces at the word, which is probably why Hulk looks so unimpressed. 

“Puny god not a hero,” he says to Valkyrie. Almost as if he’s asking her for final judgement. Valkyrie shrugs, and leans against him.

“Not many of us actually are,” she allows. “And I suppose he did help, at great risk to himself and even though he had little love for Asgard itself.”

In that, at least, they are similar. Valkyrie wouldn’t like to say it, but she understands what it is to love Odin and hate Odin in equal turns, to be vassal and weapon and then when no longer useful, a memory distant. She understands what it is to be deadly, and then to be a joke.

She does not pity or sympathize with Loki, exactly, but she can certainly make sense of his actions, nonsensical to others as they may seem. 

Loki’s eyes narrow as they stare up at her. “And what of you, Valkyrie,” he says without artifice, only curiosity. “Was there love for Asgard in your heart when you joined my brother on his suicide mission?”

Valkyrie smiles like there’s blood on her teeth, savage and victorious. “There was love for hearing dragonfang sing again,” she says. “And it was no suicide mission, by my analysis.” She nudges Hulk. “I’m not dead. Are you dead?”

Hulk grunts. “No! Hulk not dead. Hulk alive! Hulk smash wolf. Hulk almost smash fire monster with tiara but stupid Thor say stop.” He looks mutinous for a moment. “But Hulk still win! Hulk never die.” 

Valkyrie nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, more or less same,” she says, swinging her legs.

Loki arches a brow. “So you were just whiling away the years of immortality,” he says wryly. “No sentimentality to your actions at all?”

Valkyrie sighs. “If we’re going to talk, we may as well fight, too,” she says. With a nimble hop, she’s on the floor, staring up at Hulk sternly.

“No smashing for you, my favorite champion or not,” she says. “This ship’s got too much precious cargo.”

Hulk pouts. 

“But,” she says, “You can, I dunno, heckle.” 

Hulk brightens at that. 

Turning to Loki, Valkyrie slides a sharp dagger from her hip. Loki’s suspicion melts into delight, and his own twin daggers materialize in his hands.

“No seidr, no sorcery,” she warns. “Just the blade, and your own brain.” 

Loki laughs. He takes a stance, daggers held ready. “A weapon in its own right, my lady,” he says.

Valkyrie rolls her eyes. “I’ll bet,” she responds sourly. And then they’re fighting, the complicated dance of close quarters combat and flashing steel. Loki is a worthy opponent, lithe and quick, but Valkyrie fights with her body the way he has most often fought with his magic, a bone-deep mastery of the weapon at hand. She is power coiled and now unleashed, and she lets loose a whoop as they fight, a feral amusement on both their faces.

“Admit it: you followed Thor for the same reason I did,” Loki pants, over the clang of metal. “Because Asgard was your home, and you could not let it fall.”

Valkyrie scoffs. “You’ve let it fall before,” she says, the slide of her dagger just missing the skin of Loki’s cheek. “And actually, so have I.”

Loki locks her wrist, brings her close. “And that is precisely why.” His fingers are cold but his voice is even. “There are no amends to make, but perhaps there is…” he makes a face again, eyes going distant for a moment. “Growth.” 

Valkyrie considers him. Considers the siren-call and lullaby of a new start. Considers the way Thor, in all his earnest glory, plowed his way through Fate itself to fight for his people. On his own terms, in his own way. By his own choice.

“Perhaps,” she allows.

With a twist of her wrist, Loki is flipped up and over, and quickly, she turns, drives her knee to his throat. “Now yield,” she grins.

Loki’s hands are already up, an answering expression of long suffering on his face. “Erk,” he chokes, which is as good a yield as any. Valkyrie lets up, sheathing her dagger once more.

“Puny god lose! Valkyrie win! Hulk smash everyone if Hulk allowed.”

Hulk looks expectantly at Valkyrie, who hides a smile. “Not bad,” she says, “But we’ll have to work on your ability to talk shit, my friend.”

Thor’s voice is fervent when he says, “Please don’t. He already tells me I have baby muscles.”

It’s the second time in as many hours that Thor has snuck up on Valkyrie, but she can’t fault him for it. There is a keen awareness of his body that slips under her skin, into her blood, whenever their eyes catch now. It’s just as well that she was focused on the fight at hand; who knows where Loki’s daggers would have landed if she was at all distracted? 

The slow roll of Loki’s eyes indicates he knows where Valkyrie’s thoughts have headed. “Not just Asgard in your heart, then,” he snipes.

It’s with only _slightly_ vicious delight that Valkyrie sticks her foot out and watches as Loki stumbles.

Hulk does not hold back his laughter, reaching out to slap Loki on the back. “Come, puny god,” he rumbles. “Thor fight Valkyrie now. Too much lightning and noise for Hulk. You find Hulk food and Hulk forget how to smash you into floor over and over and over.”

Loki’s stare is withering as they shoulder past Thor. “I’m not your _servant_ , you wittering—” 

A warning growl, and Loki sighs. “On the other hand, all friendships must start somewhere, must they not?” he asks rhetorically, and Hulk gives a rumbling noise that sounds a lot like, _Dream on_.

Thor watches them go with a disturbingly cheery look on his face. “Those guys,” he says fondly, motioning with his thumb. “They’re just great, aren’t they?”

Valkyrie snorts. “I like Hulk,” she says, wiping the sheen of sweat from her brow. “He’s a simple one. Food, fighting, friends. What you see is what you get.” She pauses. “Well, except for the part where he turns back into a mortal man in very tight pants.”

Thor nods sagely. “Midgard has particular feelings about how things should fit around—” he motions to his pelvic area vaguely.

Valkyrie lets it go, but it’s a very difficult thing.

“Does he do that often?” she asks. “Change back and forth from man to Hulk?”

Thor walks closer, tightening the vambrace on his arm. The fight has not yet drained from Valkyrie, and her blood heats further to see Thor get battle ready. She shifts from foot to foot, and Thor shoots her a knowing grin.

“Once upon a time, yes,” he says. “But he’d been Hulk for two years by the time I arrived on Sakaar. Banner made a brave choice, knowing he might lose himself. Knowing he must confront what he feared most, all for the good of others.”

His eye is a piercing blue, and his voice is heavy with meaning.

“Don’t make me into what I’m not, my king,” Valkyrie says dryly. If she had a bottle right now, she’d take a healthy drink. “I came to Sakaar out of a hole in the world, but I stayed out of convenience. Instead of taking champions past Glasir to the hall of the fallen, I took strays to the arena for coin.”

She bends, makes a show of tightening her own armor at the knee, all the better to avoid Thor’s face.

“I’m not sorry for it,” she continues, quietly, fiercely. “Better to do it on my own terms than on any king’s orders. And at least the Grandmaster paid me in more than _glory_ or the privilege of pledging fealty.”

Valkyrie feels the old familiar bitterness take root, a seed that bloomed like a poisonous flower from the day she landed on Sakaar. Left behind. Useless. Made to kill, or to be killed, and to watch those that she loved _die_. And nothing to show for it but a golden palace that is not her own, bloody artifacts won from wars that she did not wage, and a ringside seat for the most entangled family squabbles in all the Nine Realms. 

The leather of Thor’s vest creaks as he bends into a crouch to meet Valkyrie’s own. His head is bowed, as a supplicant to his liege.

“I know the wellspring of grief and rage that must live within you. It’s not my place to cast judgment,” he says.

Valkyrie lays her hand on Thor’s head, rifling her fingers through his hair. She forgets, until moments like this, how young he is compared to her. Not yet even a gleam in the Allfather’s eye while she was already astride her horse, weapon by her side.

“No,” she says. “It is not.”

Thor preens under Valkyrie’s attention, somewhat unconsciously, nuzzling into her hand. She can’t hold back the affection in the way she combs at the wild waves at his crown, sleeking them down gently.

“I can only vow that I will be different than my father, that Asgard will be—must be—different than before.” Thor says. He has closed his eye and looks like a slumbering kitten in the sun. “And hope that you’ll see fit to join me.”

Valkyrie sighs. “As my lord commands,” she says, half-teasing. She moves to stand, but Thor opens his eye and grabs her wrist, begging her still.

“I don’t presume that _any_ being could ever command you,” he says. “I’d have you willing, or not at all.”

Something in the pit of Valkyrie’s stomach goes molten hot at the words, recognizing the honor there, as well as the suggestion. Thor might be yet a stripling, but he _does_ know how to make a pretty speech when it’s necessary. Begrudgingly, in spite of herself, Valkyrie is impressed.

She snakes her wrist from Thor’s grip, falls back to her knees to the floor, eye to eye with the god of thunder and lightning, where the leashed storm sits under valleys of warm skin over tight muscle, where his mouth is a lush promise and his gaze is just shadowed enough to be interesting. Where a contradiction of heroism and naïveté, wisdom and hope, humor and gravity, power and mercy, sit bundled together with immortality and that stupidly attractive bone structure.

She leans in, puts centuries worth of promise in her voice.

“I’m willing,” she says. “Now how, exactly, do you plan to have me?”

 

|

 

In the cramped square of his quarters, apparently.

Valkyrie cannot find it within herself to complain overmuch, having lived on the stinking cesspool of Sakaar for more years than she cares to admit. At least there’s no garbage around, and the air is cool against her overheated skin.

At first, Thor tries to be gallant, spreading the crimson drape of his cape across the narrow bed, coaxing her into slow, drugging kisses. But soon, Valkyrie becomes impatient with each inch of flesh that is yet covered, her fingers inching down the waistband of Thor’s trousers so insistently that Thor breaks away, laughing breathlessly at her haste.

“Banner isn’t the only one in very tight pants,” she says, scowling as Thor fumbles at the buttons.

“I’ve learned a lot from Midgard style,” Thor informs. “They’ve got this material called _mesh_ and—”

“Mesh your mouth against mine, or keep disrobing please,” Valkyrie interrupts. She knows very well what Midgardians do with mesh, but she’ll tuck that mental image away for another, colder, lonelier night. 

Thor obeys, dropping his vambraces at the side of the bed, tugging his leather vest over his head, and leisurely, so very leisurely, leaning back and wriggling out of his pants. 

Valkyrie feels it’s a fitting reward to simply lie back and enjoy the show.

Thor’s shoulders are broad, his skin gleaming in the low blue light, and his chest and arms are strong, pleasingly dappled with wiry blonde hair. It’s his flat stomach, the rippling abdominal muscles and ridges at his hips, that snare Valkyrie’s greed first, though, and as he kneels over her, thick thighs bracketing her own, she reaches up to _touch_.

She might groan, maybe; certainly there’s some kind of noise that comes from her throat as her hand splays over Thor’s belly, then slides up over his chest, giving one rosy nipple a cheeky tweak. At the bitten-off sound that Thor gives at that, Valkyrie’s lips curve into a smirk, and she flicks again at his nipple before smoothing her hand up his shoulder, then cupping at his neck, bringing his mouth down to meet hers again.

They kiss less slowly this time, but no less drugging. Valkyrie is dizzy with it, the rough sensation of Thor’s beard and the slick inside of his mouth, his tongue and his teeth, the way he tastes and how he smells. His body is a pleasant weight atop hers, and her hands roam from shoulder to flank, marveling at the smoothness of his skin, the play of his muscles.

“Take off my clothing now,” she breathes into his ear, tugs at his earlobe with a playful bite of her teeth. “I’m much too formally dressed for what we do here.”

And it is with courtier-like grace that Thor rises to his knees again, bringing Valkyrie to a sitting position and gently, single-mindedly, unsnapping each buckle and clasp of her armor.

He is naked while he does so, this once-prince and now-king, and Valkyrie finds it fascinating to watch the tic in his jaw as she takes him in hand. His cock is as impressive as the rest of him, pink and flushed, thick and velvet-soft over something more unyielding. She spits into her hand because she is used to making do, and then there’s just the weight of her chest armor falling away, the wet drag of her fingers twisting over the head of Thor’s prick.

“Well, that’s certainly a ringing endorsement,” she chuckles when Thor gives a loud invective. He bows his head, breathing deep through his nose, and Valkyrie increases her pressure, firm enough to give him the friction he wants. His hips rock into her grip, and the stuttering gasp that comes from his lips is so heady that Valkyrie surges up, kisses him again messily. 

When they part, Thor’s chest is mottled with the same rising blush from earlier, and his eye is steely. Pupil blown wide. Still, though, he smiles, and it’s almost sweet.

“You are very distracting,” he says. He moves the heavy fall of her hair from Valkyrie’s shoulder, allowing a breeze to kiss her skin. She groans in appreciation as his fingers massage the knot of muscles at her nape, soothing the tenderness still there.

“And you’ve missed your calling as a healer,” she teases. “Is there nothing you can’t do, Lord Thunder?” She pretends to think. “Besides drink me under a table, break out of prison without my help, fly a ship better than me—”

Thor knocks her hand gently away, wrestling her playfully to the bed, wresting her of her shirt and pants as she shrieks in unabashed laughter.

“Pokemon,” he says finally, panting with exertion. He drops her clothes from the side of the bed triumphantly. “Try as I might, I cannot catch them all.”

They are both completely, unashamedly, gloriously naked now. He is stretched over her, his fingers interlocked with hers, arms above her head. He dips, brushes his nose over hers, and Valkyrie finds herself laughing again, because Thor is strange, and this is strange, but it is _right._

“Thor,” she says. “We may be longer-lived than most, but I think it’s time to get on with it.”

Thor grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Can you imagine Hulk getting bored and just crashing in here? All _rawr_ and ‘Hulk smash too!’ and—” 

“ _Thor_.” Valkyrie tugs Thor down and gives him a long, smoldering kiss, swallowing whatever lunatic thing he’d been about to say next.

“Right,” Thor says muzzily, lips swollen, expression dazed. “Right, get on with it.”

And then he’s littering a long line of hot kisses down Valkyrie’s throat, her collarbones, the warm weight of her breasts and the silky skin underneath, the flat plane of her stomach, and then...and then…

He parts her knees, looks mischievously up at her, the eyepatch giving him a vaguely rogueish air. 

“This is probably another one of those things I cannot do better than you,” he says, “But I will try.”

His mouth on her is electric. It sends wave after wave of heat lancing through her, tingling at her fingers and toes, catching her breath in ragged gasps.

Though one might not always know to hear him speak, his tongue is indeed clever, and Valkyrie arches from the bed at the feel of it against her. He licks, and sucks, and trails his fingers from her thighs to stroke one, then two into her, until her head is shaking to and fro on the pillow. He is patient, but there is a determined intensity in his face, something bright and staticky like the air before a storm. Valkyrie lets the energy inside herself build, the pressure increasing until it is a rising tide, unstoppable, tightening at her core and then exploding into a starburst of sparking, pulsing pleasure. 

“ _Yes,”_ she hisses, scrabbling at Thor’s hair, tugging at it and pressing him closer. He holds her down with one hand splayed over her belly, even as she rides his face, chanting to the ceiling: “Yes, _more_ , by the Norns, _yes_.” 

It is nothing like what she has been used to, not like the quick and dirty couplings on Sakaar or off-world as a scrapper, not like the deep and deeply connected lovemaking amid shield and sword. Thor is not a nameless face nor a woman who lives nestled in Valkyrie’s heart. He is not rough and tumble, nor soft and supple. He is something altogether new, and uncertain.

And he is _brilliant_.

She sighs, wiping a hand over her face, feeling boneless and loose. Thor has pillowed his head against her thighs, and he gives her a look that is half anxious, half eager.

“Well?” he asks, and Valkyrie laughs, pulling Thor up to meet her in a kiss, tasting herself on his tongue. 

“You’ll do,” she says, kissing him again just because she can.

Thor sighs in relief. “Reassuring,” he says, rolling over and settling onto the bed beside her. “A seal of approval from my childhood hero.”

Valkyrie grins, knife-sharp. “Is this a test, then?” she asks. She rouses herself, climbing up and onto Thor herself, delighting in the press of their sweat-sticky bodies together. “Should I be grading you, mighty Thor?”

Thor tips his head back and groans as her hand finds his cock once more, only this time, she guides him carefully into her, welcomes him into the cradle of her hips and bites her lip as he pushes in, thick and full.

“Points for enthusiasm,” Valkyrie says. “Many points for overall—aesthetic—”

Thor grabs at Valkyrie’s arse, lets her guide the pace, watches her with wonder on his face as she rolls her hips, rising and falling on him like the sun sinking below the sea. He brings a hand between them to rub firm circles around her clit, and Valkyrie arches backward, grabs behind her at Thor’s knees.

“Points for _that_ ,” she laughs. “You do excel at swordplay, don’t you?”

Thor laughs too, a rich, hearty, happy sound that makes bells clang in Valkyrie’s head. “No more than you,” he says. “You wield a sword better than any man I’ve known.”

Valkyrie straightens at that, letting her hands trail over her breasts, thumbs flicking over her nipples.

“Have you known many men who wield swords?” she asks innocently. An image flares to life, of Thor, grappling with any number of einherjar, similarly brawny, similarly strong. Valkyrie would...not be averse to exploring that image further.

Thor’s smile is wicked. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says.

Another one, perhaps, for colder and lonelier nights than this.

Then there are no more words, only low groans and light laughter, the sound of flesh against flesh and slick kisses in the dark. 

And then later—very much later—a muffled curse and:

“Big guy, _no—”_

 

|

 

This is not any freedom, nor family, nor path that Valkyrie has ever known. But she is a woman born and a warrior made, and she knows now that she has more control over her fate than she’d ever previously believed. The rest will come as it may. So long as she has breath in her lungs, Valkyrie will make her own way. This she swears.

But. That does not mean she has to make her own way _alone_.

Curled up alongside a slumbering god, on a ship full of Aesir and alien, for the first time in a long while, Valkyrie sleeps a dreamless sleep. 

And she is not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Ace and Chelsea for looking over this and providing encouragement! And thank you to Lo and others who kept cheering me on for Val/Thor!


End file.
